Someone asked about game development in C++. I have made some text-based games in C/C++ and found that due to the complexity of (or lack thereof) my games I didn;t use many of the features from C++, so I could have written it in C. I personally prefer C/C++ over other languages (I abhor Java). That said language preference is a personal issue (to some people it's pretty much a religion), and as time has gone on you can do anything with almost any language. For example Java and VB (among others) have C bindings to be able to use C libraries, or do low-level things the language wasn't designed for.

So for game development, just pick a language that has features you want to use, and learn it. You can always change or use a mix later.